David Shaw

Net Worth: $2.9 billion
Shaw is no longer actively involved in the day-to-day operations of his $26 billion hedge fund firm, D.E. Shaw & Co., but he remains involved in certain higher-level strategic decisions affecting the business. The Stanford PhD spends the bulk of his time leading D. E. Shaw Research in his role as chief scientist of the independent laboratory he founded in 2002. Shaw was a Columbia University computer science professor until 1986, when he left to work at Morgan Stanley. Finding the environment to bureaucratic, he departed to launch D.E. Shaw & Co. in 1988. The firm, which leans heavily on mathematical computer-driven models, is known for being incredibly selective in its hires: only one in 500 applicants make the cut (Amazon founder and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos is a former employee). Shaw was appointed to the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology by President Clinton in 1994, and again by President Obama in 2009. He has been a senior research fellow at Columbia since 2005 and is an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia's medical school.